One-Ingredient Sourdough Pizza Crust

Pizza is a favorite around here. We usually only make it on ‘family night’ – the evenings we watch a family movie or play board games. We’ve tried having Coconut Fried Chicken and Indian Stuffed Peppers in its place, but for the kids to consider it an authentic family night, it’s gotta be pizza. 🙂

If you’re a regular reader at Whole Intentions you might recall my obsession interest in making recipes that are nearly all sourdough starter as in my Basic Sourdough Bread recipe. I decided to try this approach with pizza crust too and I have been very happy with the results. Why? Because this crust has one ingredient. Okay, two if you get technical. Fresh ground wheat and water. Yep – it’s all sourdough starter. Pretty simple, huh!

I’m also excited because Travis agreed to be a guinea pig for this recipe and eat some of it. For those of you new to Whole Intentions, that statement might not make sense. 🙂 My husband Travis is gluten-free and also on a candida diet. If you’re familiar with either of those diets, you’ll know that wheat is a BIG no-no as it contains gluten and starch.

So why am I forcing my beloved husband to be a guinea pig and eat pizza crust made with wheat? Well, first of all, trust me when I say I didn’t have to coerce him, kicking and screaming, to take a bite of pizza. 🙂 He willingly obliged.

He became my guinea pig because of some interesting reading I’d come across about sourdough and how it breaks down gluten and starches. This made me curious. Travis readily notices if he eats wheat. He doesn’t suffer gastrointestinal issues but rather muscle stiffness and soreness that limits his mobility. I’ve read several times now that some gluten-free people have been able to eat sourdough without reacting to it. I was interested to see if Travis was one of them.

We’ve made sourdough pizza just about every week for over two years now. I’m happy to report that he never notices symptoms or has reactions to the gluten. (I’m inserting a happy little squeal here!) Although we still limit grains because we want to keep candida at bay, this is pretty huge for him.

Directions:
1. About 6 hours before you want to bake your crust, feed your sourdough starter with fresh ground flour (I used my ultra quiet Whisper Mill) and water. The hardest part of this entire recipe is getting your starter to the right consistency. I like to have mine the thickness between cake batter and cookie dough. (There, that wasn’t too hard, was it. :))

3. With a spoon, spread the sourdough starter out to the size you want your crust. The starter barely spreads when baking. I leave about a 1″ space from the edge. Bake the crust for about 10 min.

4. Remove the crust from the oven and add your pizza sauce and desired toppings. Bake at 500 degrees for 10 minutes or until done.

About Whole Intentions

Paula Miller is a child of God, wife to Travis, homeschooling mom of five, Christian children's author, lover of coconut oil, and Lilla Rose consultant. She and her family live on a small hobby farm in the Midwest. Several years of family health problems led her to learn about whole foods, candida, food allergies, and healthy alternatives to modern medicine. She chats about whole food, whole living, and whole faith on her blog, Whole Intentions. You can also chat with her on Facebook and Twitter.

Grain Mill Wagon Challenge Experience:

I was really excited about joining this challenge. Firstly, I’d had motor problems with my previous two mills and wondered if the WonderMill would prove to run smoother, quieter, and become a favorite household appliance. It passed with flying colors! I love how easy it is to put together and use. I also liked that it wasn't as tall as my previous grain mills. Finding a place to store it when not in use was quick and easy. I also noted that it was indeed quieter. With five kids at home, any machine that doesn't add to the noise level is much appreciated!

Secondly, I found that this challenge encouraged me to experiment with several of the sourdough recipes I’d been wanting to convert to a 100% starter. Some of them I’d remake over again to tweak just a bit, much to the delight of the family. The One Ingredient Sourdough Pizza Crust and Sourdough Chocolate Fudge Cake were favorites!

OK, this looks even easier than the sourdough waffles and crackers I like to make to use up extra starter! I’ve been meaning to make sourdough pizza sometime soon, but have put it off because I was lazy about kneading the dough for the crust.

I’ve never tried buckwheat sourdough – my only concern would be whether or not it would hold together well. If I were you I’d put a small circle, maybe the size of a saucer, onto a pizza pan and try it at that size before you tried a whole pizza.

Hi, I tried this tonight and learnt how to make it better next time. I made it a bit too thick because I didn’t allow for it rising but it was very yummy! I’ve made an extra one only about half as thick, and frozen it so we’ll see how it travels next weekend.
My sourdough is a mixture of spelt wholemeal and rye flour and it worked really well. I will add a little salt next time unless I use salty toppings. Tonight I used roast pumpkin, beetroot, onion and garlic topped with crumbled fetta and walnuts and drizzled with Balsamic glaze. oh and used my kefir cheese freshly made today, under everything on the base -Sooo yummy with the tangy taste of the dough base.
I found your recipe just at the right time because I HATE throwing extra dough away and my container reached its maximum capacity today. I gave a starter to a neighbour and still had too much. I reckon it used about two cups for the first thicker one and probably only just over a cup for the second. Does that sound similar to yours?
Thank you so much for sharing your recipe. It’s one I will use often from now on.

Hmm. Is your oven hot enough? Depending on how high you are above sea level, you might want to turn it up to 400. Is your oven rack too low or high? Ours is right in the middle. Is your crust too thick? I’ve noticed that it takes longer if we have a thicker crust.

Not sure what else to tell you. I see it’s been a few days since you wrote your comment – how did the end product turn out?

So do I follow the Sour Dough starter recipe on the link you provided. Or do I just put the sour dough starter in a blow and my favorite flour? and just add water to the consistency I like? Forgive my ignorance.

The sourdough starter link brings you to a page that describes how to start and take care of a sourdough starter – just in case you’ve never used it before and want to learn.

If you’ve got a totally new sourdough starter then I would follow the link and feed it flour and water for several weeks (per the directions on that page) to give it a chance to build up to a nice, strong starter before you start baking with it.

If you already have a starter going, then just feed it equal amounts of flour and water about 6 hours or so before you want to use it for your pizza crust.